The present invention relates generally to armament storage devices and more particularly to an ammunition bunker of the type wherein explosive materials may be stored.
Containers of the type to which the present invention relates adapted to receive therein ammunition are, as a rule, arranged so that the ammunition is held in the manner of an individual packaging element with the packings containing the ammunition being stacked in the form of a bunker. The packaged parts of these bunkers are usually produced individually and they are then joined together in an assembly process. This is usually true in the case where the packing parts are made of plastic material and wherein, at most, smaller units are combined into an integral structural component and are manufactured in this manner and subsequently joined together to form the overall ammunition bunker.
The reason for the foregoing approach is found to be primarily due to the fact that, when structural units are overly large, there arises a danger of premature hardening or of instability during the production procedure which danger is relatively high and which thus causes unacceptable waste to occur.
Compared with the differential construction, an integral construction approach will reduce total expenses for production but it will still not be reduced to an optimum degree.
Moreover, in the design of bunkers it must be primarily assumed that the design should be oriented on the construction so that forces acting on the entire completed ammunition bunker cannot be conducted through paths and over sections which would represent an optimum with respect to static considerations. Other consequences involve weight increases. Additionally, material desired for reasons of ballistic considerations are not always usable or not always usable without special considerations because, in the required manner of construction, they frequently can only be assembled under great difficulty and they therefore cannot be manufactured economically.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed primarily toward achievement of a reduction in the required individual parts of an ammunition bunker in order to decrease assembly expenses thereof while simultaneously facilitating a structure in which the forces are absorbed in an optimum manner. In this regard, discontinuities and notches are to be avoided in the cross sections of the structure, and the integral construction should be as large as possible with the construction being self-supporting or at least jointly supporting.